False Gods whh-2

by Graham McNeill

  'He's alive,' sobbed Mersadie. 'I knew he had to be. He couldn't be dead.'

  'No,' agreed Karkasy. 'He couldn't.'

  They broke apart and sagged against the railings as the Astartes escorted the fallen Warmaster across the deck. As the huge blast doors rumbled open, the masses of people gathered outside surged through in a great wave, their cries of loss and pain audible even through the armoured glass of the observation gantry.

  'No,' whispered Karkasy. 'No, no, no.'

  The Astartes were in no mood to be slowed by this mass of people, and brutally clubbed them aside as they forced a path through the crowd. The Mournival led the gurney through the crowds, mercilessly clearing a bloody path through the people before them. Karkasy saw men and women cast down, trampled underfoot, and their screams were pitiful to hear.

  Mersadie held his arm as they watched the Astartes bludgeon their way from the embarkation deck. They vanished through the blast door and were lost to sight as they rushed towards the medical deck.

  'Those poor people…' cried Mersadie, sinking to her knees and looking down on a scene like the aftermath of a battle: wounded soldiers, remembrancers and civilians lay where they had fallen, bleeding and broken, simply because they were unlucky enough to be in the path of the Astartes.

  'They didn't care,' said Karkasy, still unable to believe the bloody scenes that he'd just witnessed. 'They've killed those people. It was like they didn't care.'

  Still in shock at the casual ease with which the Astartes had punched through the crowd, Karkasy gripped the railings, his knuckles white and his jaw clenched with outrage.

  'How dare they?' he hissed. 'How dare they?'

  His anger at the scenes below still seethed close to the surface, however, he noticed a robed figure making her way through the carnage below, reaching out to the injured and stunned.

  His eyes narrowed, but he recognised the shapely form of Euphrati Keeler.

  She was handing out Lectitio Divinitatus pamphlets, and she wasn't alone.

  Maloghurst watched the recording from the embarkation deck with a grim expression, watching his fellow Sons of Horus batter their way through the crowds that swarmed around the Warmaster's wracked body. The pict replayed again on the viewer set into the table in the Warmaster's sanctum, and each time he watched it, he willed it to be different, but each time the flickering images remained resolutely the same.

  'How many dead?' asked Hektor Varvarus, standing at Maloghurst's shoulder.

  'I don't have the final figures yet, but at least twenty one are dead, and many more are badly injured or won't wake from the comas they're in.'

  He cursed Loken and the others for their heavy handedness as the image played again, but supposed he couldn't blame them for their ardour. The Warmaster was in a critical condition and no one knew if he would live, so their desperation to reach the medical decks was forgivable, even if many might say that their actions were not.

  'A bad business, Maloghurst,' said Varvarus needlessly. 'The Astartes will not come out of this well.'

  Maloghurst sighed, and said, 'They thought the Warmaster was dying and acted accordingly.'

  'Acted accordingly?' repeated Varvarus. 'I do not think many people will accept that, my friend, once word of this gets out, it will be a crippling blow to morale.'

  'It will not get out,' assured Maloghurst. 'I am rounding up everyone who was on that deck and have shut down all non-command vox traffic from the ship.'

  Tall and precise, Hektor Varvarus was rake-thin and angular, and his every movement was calculated - traits he carried over into his role as Lord Commander of the Army forces of the 63rd Expedition.

  'Trust me, Maloghurst, this will get out. One way or another, it will get out. Nothing remains secret forever. Such things have a habit of wanting to be told and this will be no different.'

  'Then what do you suggest, lord commander?' asked Maloghurst.

  'Are you genuinely asking me, Mal, or are you just observing a courtesy because I am here?'

  'I was genuinely asking,' said Maloghurst, smiling as he realised that he meant it. Varvarus was a canny soldier who understood the hearts and minds of mortal men.

  'Then you have to tell people what happened. Be honest.'

  'Heads will need to roll,' cautioned Maloghurst. 'People will demand blood for this.'

  'Then give it to them. If that's what it takes, give it to them. Someone has to be seen to pay for this atrocity.'

  'Atrocity? Is that what we're calling it now?'

  'What else would you call it? Astartes warriors have committed murder.'

  The enormity of what Varvarus was suggesting staggered Maloghurst, and he lowered himself slowly into one of the chairs at the Warmaster's table.

  'You would have me give up an Astartes warrior for this? I cannot do it.'

  Varvarus leaned over the table, the decorations and medals of his dress uniform reflecting like gold suns in its black surface.

  'Innocent blood has been spilled, and while I can understand the reasons behind the actions of your men, it changes nothing.'

  'I can't do it, Hektor,' said Maloghurst, shaking his head.

  Varvarus moved to stand next to him. 'You and I both swore the oath of loyalty to the Imperium did we not?'

  'We did, but what has that to do with anything?'

  The old general locked eyes with Maloghurst and said, 'We swore that we would uphold the ideals of nobility and justice that the Imperium stands for, yes?'

  'Yes, but this is different. There were extenuating circumstances…'

  'Irrelevant,' snapped Varvarus. 'The Imperium must stand for something, or it stands for nothing. If you turn away from this, then you betray that oath of loyalty. Axe you willing to do that, Maloghurst?'

  Before he could answer, there was a soft knocking on the glass of the sanctum and Maloghurst turned to see who disturbed them.

  Ing Mae Sing, Mistress of Astropathy, stood before them like a skeletal ghost in a hooded white robe, the upper portions of her face shrouded in shadows.

  'Mistress Sing,' said Varvarus, bowing deeply towards the telepath.

  'Lord Varvarus,' she replied, her voice soft and feather-light. She returned the lord commander's bow and despite her blindness, inclined her head in precisely the right direction - a talent that never failed to unnerve Maloghurst.

  'What is it, Mistress Sing?' he asked, though in truth, he was glad of the interruption.

  'I bring tidings that must concern you, Sire Maloghurst,' she said, turning her blind gaze upon him. 'The astropathic choirs are unsettled. They sense a powerful surge in the currents of the warp: powerful and growing.'

  'What does that mean?' he asked.

  'That the veil between worlds grows thin,' said Ing Mae Sing.

  TEN

  Apothecarion

  Prayers

  Confession

  Stripped out of his armour and wearing bloody surgical robes, Vaddon was as close to desperate as he had ever been in his long experience as an apothecary of the Sons of Horus. The Warmaster lay before him on the gurney, his flesh exposed to his knives and to the probes of the medicae machines. Oxygen was fed to the Warmaster through a mask, and saline drips pumped fluids into his body in an attempt to normalise his blood pressure. Medicae servitors brought fresh blood for immediate transfusions and the entire theatre fizzed with tension and frantic activity.

  'We're losing him!' shouted Apothecary Logaan, watching the heart monitors. 'Blood pressure is dropping rapidly, heart rate spiking. He's going to arrest!'

  'Damn it,' cursed Vaddon. 'Get me more Larraman serum, his blood won't clot, and fix up another fluid line.'

  A whirring surgical narthecium swung down from the ceiling, multiple limbs clattering as they obeyed Vaddon's shouted commands. Fresh Larraman cells were pumped directly into Horus's shoulder and the bleeding slowed, though Vaddon could see it still wasn't stopping completely. Thick needles jabbed into the Warmaster's arms, filling him with super-oxygenated bl
ood, but their supply was dwindling faster than he would have believed possible.

  'Stabilising,' breathed Logaan. 'Heart rate slowing and blood pressure is up.'

  'Good,' said Vaddon. 'We've got some breathing room then.'

  'He can't take much more of this,' said Logaan. 'We're running out of things we can do for him.'

  'I'll not hear that in my theatre, Logaan,' snapped Vaddon. 'We're not going to lose him.'

  The Warmaster's chest hiked as he clung to life, his breathing coming in short, hyperventilating gasps, more blood pumping from the wound in his shoulder.

  Of the two wounds the Warmaster had suffered, it seemed the least severe, but Vaddon knew it was the one that was killing him. The puncture wound in his chest had practically healed already, ultra sonograms showing that his lung had sealed itself off from the pulmonary system while it repaired itself. The Warmaster's secondary lungs were sustaining him for now.

  The Mournival hovered like expectant fathers as the apothecaries worked harder than they had ever worked before. Vaddon had never expected to have the Warmaster for a patient. The primarch's biology was as far beyond that of a normal Astartes warrior as his own was from a mortal man, and Vaddon knew that he was out of his depth. Only the Emperor himself had the knowledge to delve into the body of a primarch with confidence, and the enormity of what was occurring was not lost on him. A green light winked into life on the narthecium machine and he lifted the data-slate from the port in its silver steel surface. Numbers and text scrolled across its glossy surface and though much of it made no sense to him, he felt his spirits fall as what he could comprehend sank in.

  Seeing that the Warmaster was stable, he circled the operating slab and joined the Mournival, wishing he had better news for them.

  'What's wrong with him?' demanded Abaddon. 'Why is he still lying there?'

  'Honestly, first captain, I don't know.'

  'What do you mean, "You don't know"?' shouted Abaddon, grabbing Vaddon and slamming him against the theatre wall. Silver trays laden with scalpels, saws and forceps clattered to the tiled floor. 'Why don't you know?'

  Loken and Aximand grappled with the first captain as Vaddon felt Abaddon's enormous strength slowly crushing his neck.

  'Let go of him, Ezekyle!' cried Loken. 'This isn't helping!'

  'You won't let him die!' snarled Abaddon, and Vaddon was amazed to see a terrible fear in the first captain's eyes. 'He is the Warmaster!'

  'You think I don't know that?' gasped Vaddon as the others prised Abaddon's grip from his neck. He slid down the wall, already able to feel the swelling in his bruised throat.

  'Emperor damn you if you let him die,' hissed Abaddon, stalking the theatre with predatory strides. 'If he dies, I will kill you.'

  Aximand led the first captain away from him, speaking soothing words as Loken and Torgaddon helped him to his feet.

  'The man's a maniac,' hissed Vaddon. 'Get him out of my theatre, now!'

  'He's not himself, apothecary,' explained Loken. 'None of us are.'

  'Just keep him away from my team, captain,' warned Vaddon. 'He's not in control of himself, and that makes him dangerous.'

  'We will,' Torgaddon promised him. 'Now what can you tell us? Will he survive?'

  Vaddon took a moment to compose himself before answering, picking up his fallen data-slate. 'As I said before, I just don't know. We're like children trying to repair a logic engine that's been dropped from orbit. We don't understand even a fraction of what his body is capable of or how it works. I can't even begin to guess what kind of damage it's suffered to have caused this'

  'What's actually happening to him?' asked Loken.

  'It's the wound in his shoulder; it won't clot. It's bleeding out and we can't stop it. We found some degraded genetic residue in the wound that might be some kind of poison, but I can't be sure.'

  'Might it be a bacteriological or a viral infection?' asked Torgaddon. 'The water on Davin's moon was thick with contaminants. I ought to know, I swallowed a flagon's worth of it.'

  'No,' said Vaddon. 'The Warmaster's body is, for all intents and purposes, immune to such things'

  'Then what is it?'

  'This is a guess, but it looks like this particular poison induces a form of anaemic hypoxia. Once it enters the bloodstream, it's absorbed exponentially by the red blood cells, in preference to oxygen. With the Warmaster's accelerated metabolism, the toxin was carried efficiently around his system, damaging his tissue cells as it went, so they were unable to make proper use of the reduced oxygen content.'

  'So where did it come from?' asked Loken.

  'I thought you said the Warmaster was immune to such things.'

  'And so he is, but this is like nothing I've ever seen before… it's as though it's been specifically designed to kill him. It's got precisely the right genetic camouflage to fool his enhanced biological defences and allow it to do the maximum amount of damage. It's a primarch killer - pure and simple.'

  'So how do we stop it?'

  'This isn't an enemy you can take a bolter or sword to, Captain Loken. It's a poison,' he said. 'If I knew the source of the poisoning, we might be able to do something.'

  'Then if we found the weapon that did this, would that be of some help?' asked Loken.

  Seeing the desperate need for hope in the captain's eyes, Vaddon nodded. 'Maybe. From the wound shape, it looks like a stab wound from a sword. If you can retrieve the blade, then maybe we can do something for him.'

  'I'll find it,' swore Loken. He turned from Vaddon and made his way to the theatre door.

  'You're going back there?' asked Torgaddon, running to catch up with him.

  'Yes, and don't try to stop me,' warned Loken.

  'Stop you?' said Torgaddon. 'Don't be such a drama queen, Garvi. I'm coming with you.'

  Recovering a Titan after action in the field was a long and arduous process, full of technical, logistical and manual difficulties. Entire fleets of vessels came down from orbit, bringing huge lifters, enormous diggers and loading machines. The delivery vessels had to be dug from their impact craters, and an army of Mechanicum servitors were required to facilitate the process.

  Titus Cassar was exhausted. He'd spent the better part of the day prepping the Titan for its recovery and everything was in readiness for their return to the fleet. Until they were recovered, there wasn't much to do except wait, and that had become the hardest part of all for the men left behind on Davin's moon.

  With time to wait, there was time to think, and with time to think, the human mind could conjure all manner of things from the depths of its imagination. Titus still couldn't believe that Horus had fallen. A being of such power, like unto a Titan himself, was not meant to fall in battle - he was invincible, the son of a god.

  In the shadow of the Dies Irae, Titus fished out his Lectitio Divinitatus chapbook and, once he was satisfied he was alone, began to read the words there. The badly printed scripture gave him comfort, turning his mind to the glory of the divine Emperor of Mankind.

  'Oh Emperor, who is lord and god above us all, hear me in this hour of need. Your servant lies with death's cold touch upon him and I ask you to turn your beneficent gaze his way.'

  He fished out a pendant from beneath his uniform jacket as he read. It was a delicately wrought thing of silver and gold that he'd had one of the blank-faced servitors fashion for him. A silver capital ''I'' with a golden starburst at its centre, it represented hope and the promise of a better future.

  He held it clasped to his breast as he recited more of the words of the Lectitio Divinitatus, feeling a familiar warmth suffuse him as he repeated the words.

  Titus sensed the presence of other people behind him a second too late and turned to see Jonah Aruken and a group of the Titan's crew.

  Like him, they were dirty and tired after the fight against the monsters of this place, but unlike him they did not have faith.

  Guiltily, he closed his chapbook and waited for Jonah's inevitable barb. No one said anythin
g, and as he looked closer, he saw a brittle edge of sorrow and the need for comfort in the faces of the men before him.

  'Titus,' said Jonah Aruken. 'We… uh… that is… the Warmaster. We wondered if…'

  Titus smiled in welcome as understood what they'd come for.

  He opened his chapbook again and said; 'Let us pray, brothers.'

  The medical deck was a sterile, gleaming wilderness of tiled walls and brushed steel cabinets, a warren of soulless glass rooms and laboratories. Petronella had completely lost all sense of direction, bewildered by the hasty summons that had brought her from the moon's surface back to the Vengeful Spirit.

  Passing through the bloody embarkation deck, she saw that the upper levels of the ship were in pandemonium as word of the Warmaster's death had spread from vessel to vessel with all the fearsome rapidity of an epidemic.

  Maloghurst the Twisted had issued a fleet-wide communique denying that the Warmaster was dead, but hysteria and paranoia had a firm head start on his words. Riots had taken hold aboard several ships as doomsayers and demagogues had arisen proclaiming that these were now the end times. Army units had been ruthlessly quashing such malcontents, but more sprang up faster then they could stop them.

  It had been scant hours since the Warmaster's fall, but the 63rd Expedition was already beginning to tear itself apart without him.

  Maggard followed Petronella, his wounds bound and sealed with syn-skin by a Legion apothecary on the journey back to the Warmaster's flagship. His skin still had an unhealthy pallor and his armour was dented and torn, but he was alive and magnificent. Maggard was only an indentured servant, but he had impressed her and she resolved to treat him with the respect his talents deserved.

  A helmeted Astartes warrior led her through the confusing maze of the medicae deck, eventually indicating that she should enter a nondescript white door marked with a winged staff wrapped in a pair of twisting serpents.

  Maggard opened the door for her and she entered a gleaming operating theatre, its circular walls covered, to waist height, in green enamelled tiles. Silver cabinets and hissing, pumping machines surrounded the Warmaster, who lay on the operating slab with a tangled web of tubes and wires attached to his flesh. A stool of gleaming metal sat next to the slab.